Anxious Heart
by simplyprologue
Summary: They've built their homes, their native lands, in each other. Post 2.09.


**A/N:** I don't particularly know where this came from, except from a rather random headcanon that Mitral Valve Prolapse Disorder runs in the McHale family and that Mac's father suffers from a severe case of it, as well as a few other headcanons that have been collecting dust, so I wrote them down in this weird prose-y piece while waiting for the new chapter of Loose Ends to come out of beta.

* * *

On Saturday, he wakes up before her, and counts it a blessing.

(If only because she's beaten him to consciousness every day this week, if only because it's the first time in six years, if only because it's the first time in six years, she'll confess when she wakes up, that she's slept more than four hours at a time—because safe is a person, not a place, and she's home.)

On Saturday, November 10, he wakes up before her, one hand splayed over her belly and his other arm tucked under her head.

She's so tiny. Not really, he knows, but with his fingers splayed he can cover most of her abdomen with one hand, from the crest of her ribs to dip where her pelvis butterflies out under her skin, curving out to jutted hipbones and the dip of her waist. The terrain is familiar. MacKenzie, after all, has always been his native country; the pain of missing her had been irreconcilable for no reason more than the fact that he had built his ether into the hollows of her bones, and then let her take flight with the basest parts of himself.

Love, Will thinks, might be when the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

They're not happy; it's hard to be when there's a mutli-million dollar lawsuit bearing down upon your house. They're not happy, but he thinks they might be content, which could be better, and they're home, back in the loamy soil of the foundry. They are safe here, and stable, and _more_. Their love is a house, and she is his anxious heart.

_Do you remember, three years ago? My first day—you said that Charlie told you that I was mentally and physically exhausted? _

_I remember. _

_I said that everyone was exhausted. _

_Yes. _And then, he knew, because maybe he didn't want to before, because she didn't tell him because she didn't think she deserved to tip the scales any in her favor and he didn't either, and then he'd just stopped looking, or maybe just stopped seeing, until Genoa.

_I lied. _

(If only because she was afraid he wouldn't care, if only because she was afraid he'd be angry that she thought he would, if only because?)

Even if she's a little unstable, the foundation they've laid claim to is not. They've come home, after long last, their bones a port of call. She is safe harbor; he will be hers. Antebellum innocence has not followed him to this armistice day, welcoming him back to the place where he first was born, took heart and feeble steps forward out over grassy plains and steep mountains.

She was there when daylight began.

And she is here now.

_I was diagnosed with PTSD six months after the stabbing. That's why I came home. That's why I—I'm sorry, I should have told you when you asked me to marry you. You can take it back, if you want—_

They didn't sleep together, that first night, but crumpled into bed after her revelation that wasn't so much a revelation but a truth coming together like rivers pouring into the other, the confluence rough and deep and threatening to drown her; he's been here before, he knows the way out. She'd cried herself to sleep in his arms, and he whispered his love for her like current of the blood in his veins, winding down the mountains steep, yearning for the ocean, their errant hearts.

Her skin is warm under his palm. The river is wide and the storm isn't miles and months out to sea anymore, but they'll meet it together. All conditions have expired; he can't live without her. They are not fragile, but smelt iron and the heat and press of the past six years have only made them stronger.

(They are still weak and fragile creatures in so many other ways, but the linkages that seam them together have been rendered indefatigable.)

He hadn't slept at all that first night, fell asleep as the sun broke over the skyline and woke an hour later with Mac flaring her hands out over his chest, murmuring nonsense into his ear and they'd crawled out of bed to watch the wire as the minutes ticked down until the court clerk's office opened. Wednesday night had brought more exhaustion, and Thursday, the same, and they stumbled into bed.

Last night they came home.

He remembers the first time he'd noticed her heart, if only (if only, if only) because he remembers every minute detail of the first time he'd made love to her; afterwards had pillowed his head on her breast and heard the pounding off-beat rhythm. _Oh, that, _she'd said when he'd asked. _No one's ever noticed before_, and he'd gotten a treatise on four generations of McHale hearts, on chambers and valves that didn't work quite right, on the current rushing backwards and prolapsing tissues that didn't meet correctly enough. _My father's is much worse. _

Will slides his palm over her stomach, dips his head to kiss the side of her morning-soft breast and the curve of her sternum, slides his hand back to pass over pearly jagged scar tissue. He remembers her imperfections; dappled skin, each mole in its place, topography and geography and the backwards-thunk on the offbeat of her pulse, knitted skin and he's the cartographer. He knows her, and he knows he's got salted earth where she's pliable and growing green, and it all makes sense in the end.

_Your heart, has it gotten worse, since, because—?_

_I see a cardiologist, have tests done. But you know I've always been anxious. _

She murmurs in her sleep, turning towards him, and he lays his head down on her chest. She's his heart, his war-torn country that he'll come home to rebuild, passport in hand and flag clutched proudly in his fist. The haunted hallways of his childhood, shadows passing under closed doors and muffled screams and crying children—he buried Nebraska far from his skin and wandered aimlessly for decades.

He listens; mid-systolic shift, late systolic murmur.

Steepled fingers trace up the bare skin on his back, tripping over heightened shoulder blades. She wakes slowly, and he's grateful. She'd woken a few hours ago, jolted awake, and he'd shushed her back under the waves and it'd been violent and nervous, like MacKenzie often is but please not here, he thinks. Let her sleep.

Her hand flattens out against his neck, and he can feel the cool band of platinum on her finger. Under his cheek, she sighs, muscles elongating and pulling before she turns into him, burying her face against the top of his head.

_Mid-systolic shift, late systolic murmur. _The current rushes back.

(If only he'd come back sooner, if only he hadn't needed this to pull him back, if only he'd known to come home quicker, but he's like a child waiting for the streetlights to come on and the monsters to come out to rush to the familiar doorway, the screen door swinging shut behind him as the storm clouds linger overhead.

If only, and they wouldn't be the people they are now, and he likes the rafters and the wallpaper and the creaky floors, even if they're living in tornado alley. His heart is hers and hers is his and they've built their home on solid ground. They've been apart more than they've ever been together, and the last three years have been more than just rebuilding. Not refugees anymore; they belong only to to each other, clutching hands and heated skin, promises and miles to go before they rest, but they're building something here, sovereign hearts on terra firma.)

It all comes rushing back; he doesn't fear being swept out to sea.

_I'm going to marry you, MacKenzie. You're going to be my wife. _He's spent too long being afraid to go home, false equivalence ringing in the space between his ears. He'd stared at her, at the spot on the floor where she'd wrapped her arms around herself and shook.

_I should have told you. _

_Why?_

_Full disclosure. _

_Mac, I—I never really let you have the chance to tell me, I hurt you, why should you have told me—why did you say yes, even? _

_Because—_

He draws mountains and borderlines on her skin, over the pale blue lines under the delicate skin at her wrist, sliding the pads of his fingers between her knuckles.

_—Because we're better together than when we're apart, because I don't know how to come home. I've lived everywhere, postings and warzones and schools, I haven't stayed anywhere more than three years. But I know how to come home to you. _

There's MacKenzie in his bones, as much as he's in hers.

(The sum is home.)

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**Thanks for reading!**


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